EPTOn the train. In line at the pharmacy. Even in class. You really never know when someone might snap a picture of you, add a sleazy comment and post it to a highly trafficked site like Reddit to be ogled at by strangers. Don't believe it? It actually happens a lot.
CreepShots, a forum on Reddit devoted to photos taken of women without their knowledge or consent, was recently embroiled in controversy after a teacher was fired for posting a picture of his underage student.
At this time, the sub-Reddit CreepShots has been banned, as has an alternate subReddit, CreepyShots. However CreepSquad, another comparable site, has already cropped up in its place.
Now, a new Tumblr blog hopes to give creepsters a taste of their own medicine.
Predditors -- a play on 'Redditors,' a nickname for users of the site -- posts personal information about CreepShots submitters, including photos, Facebook pages, marital status, location and occupation, and any other identifying details found by sleuthing on the Internet.
According to Jezebel, the creator of the site is a 25-year old woman who wants posters to be held accountable for their creepiness. "Reddit's defense of [CreepShots] is that it's 'technically legal,'" she said. "So I'm doing something that's technically legal, but will result in consequences for their actions. These fuckers think they can get away with it scot free, which is one of the reasons why sexual violence is so prevalent around the world."
The site has named 36 Reddit users since it launched on Sept. 29th.
But some people see a bit of hypocrisy in fighting fire with fire. One Reddit user, who did not want to be named, said he thought labeling users as "sexual predators" was unfair. "There is a line in what a sexual predator is, and taking a photo of a hot girl in public is NOT that," he said. "Creepy, yes."
UPDATE: Tumblr has apparently taken down the Predditors blog. Links to the Tumblr account were down on Thursday morning. Users are sounding off about the presumed takedown. You can read their reactions here.
UPDATE: Reddit and the website Gawker are now sparring over CreepShots. The subReddit r/Politics has banned links to all Gawker content, alleging that Gawker journalist Adrian Chen was threatening to make the identify of the CreepShots moderator public.
Here's how a politics moderator explained the decision:
As a result, the moderators of /r/politics have chosen to disallow links from the Gawker network until action is taken to correct this serious lack of ethics and integrity.
We thank you for your understanding.
At least 10 other Reddit sub-forums have followed suit.
Redditors are not letting CreepShots go without a fight. On the new CreepShots forum, CreepSquad, users are warned to "please stay safe" by using an alternative account to post photos.
CreepShots, a forum on Reddit devoted to photos taken of women without their knowledge or consent, was recently embroiled in controversy after a teacher was fired for posting a picture of his underage student.
At this time, the sub-Reddit CreepShots has been banned, as has an alternate subReddit, CreepyShots. However CreepSquad, another comparable site, has already cropped up in its place.
Now, a new Tumblr blog hopes to give creepsters a taste of their own medicine.
Predditors -- a play on 'Redditors,' a nickname for users of the site -- posts personal information about CreepShots submitters, including photos, Facebook pages, marital status, location and occupation, and any other identifying details found by sleuthing on the Internet.
According to Jezebel, the creator of the site is a 25-year old woman who wants posters to be held accountable for their creepiness. "Reddit's defense of [CreepShots] is that it's 'technically legal,'" she said. "So I'm doing something that's technically legal, but will result in consequences for their actions. These fuckers think they can get away with it scot free, which is one of the reasons why sexual violence is so prevalent around the world."
The site has named 36 Reddit users since it launched on Sept. 29th.
But some people see a bit of hypocrisy in fighting fire with fire. One Reddit user, who did not want to be named, said he thought labeling users as "sexual predators" was unfair. "There is a line in what a sexual predator is, and taking a photo of a hot girl in public is NOT that," he said. "Creepy, yes."
UPDATE: Tumblr has apparently taken down the Predditors blog. Links to the Tumblr account were down on Thursday morning. Users are sounding off about the presumed takedown. You can read their reactions here.
UPDATE: Reddit and the website Gawker are now sparring over CreepShots. The subReddit r/Politics has banned links to all Gawker content, alleging that Gawker journalist Adrian Chen was threatening to make the identify of the CreepShots moderator public.
Here's how a politics moderator explained the decision:
As a result, the moderators of /r/politics have chosen to disallow links from the Gawker network until action is taken to correct this serious lack of ethics and integrity.
We thank you for your understanding.
At least 10 other Reddit sub-forums have followed suit.
Redditors are not letting CreepShots go without a fight. On the new CreepShots forum, CreepSquad, users are warned to "please stay safe" by using an alternative account to post photos.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/11/predditors-tumblr-creepshots-reddit_n_1955897.html
The tumblr in question was accessible until earlier today, but now it asks for a password, presumably to avoid getting more attention after already being shut down once.
Edit: I'm going to add this because I think this point needs to be addressed:
I would just ask whoever is in support of this CreepShots continuing to exist to consider this point:
"But Samantha (OP note: the creator of the Predditor tumblr) believes that CreepShots is a gateway drug to more dangerous hobbies. Fetishizing non-consent "indicates [that CreepShots posters] don't view women as people, and most will not be satisfied with just that level of violation," she said. "I want to make sure that the people around these men know what they're doing so they can reap social, professional, or legal consequences, and possibly save women from future sexual assault. These men are dangerous."
I'm sure some of you have girlfriends. All of you have moms. Some of you have sisters and nieces. Do you really want them, or any women, to have to go through the stress of wondering whether someone in public is going to take a shot of them in a compromising position, then trade it like a baseball card with hundreds of other faceless goons to masturbate to? Along with possible enabling a sexual assault because someone takes it too far?
On October 12 2012 07:22 Stijx wrote:
While it does seem wrong to allow people to post this, I don't think an appropriate response is to real-life witch-hunt the people doing it. These "creeps" can not be paralleled with sexual predators, and certainly don't deserve any violent real-world ramifications for their actions.
Putting pictures, albeit very creepy ones, on the internet of men / women to be appreciated is not the same as putting up pictures of people to be shunned or, in the worst cases, attacked.
I'm glad tumblr took the page down.
While it does seem wrong to allow people to post this, I don't think an appropriate response is to real-life witch-hunt the people doing it. These "creeps" can not be paralleled with sexual predators, and certainly don't deserve any violent real-world ramifications for their actions.
Putting pictures, albeit very creepy ones, on the internet of men / women to be appreciated is not the same as putting up pictures of people to be shunned or, in the worst cases, attacked.
I'm glad tumblr took the page down.
Read this post, then consider this point about "creeps" being associated with sexual predators. Many of them probably are, and we just haven't figured it out yet.
Take this fine example:
"One afternoon in late September, Coweta County Sheriff Investigator Jason Fetner asked Christopher Bailey, a 35-year-old substitute teacher at East Coweta High, to meet with him regarding a school theft. But when Bailey arrived, Fetner told him the real reason for their meeting: he knew that Bailey had been posting photos of his students — "Hot senior girl in one of my classes," read one charming caption — on the subreddit r/CreepShots, some of which had been viewed thousands of times.
Most of Bailey's CreepShots contributions were relatively "innocent" (for example, you couldn't see the senior girl's underwear) and therefore legal, but the content Fetner subsequently found on Bailey's cellphone — including multiple texts and nude photos that he sent to girls as young as 16 — were not, and police are now pursuing charges. But how did Fetner know that the substitute teacher with a clean record was a secret sexual predator? Thanks to a tip from a group of anonymous Redditors who are sick of seeing the CreepShots community gleefully post teen upskirt photo after teen upskirt photo while telling the "internet morality police" to "fuck off" and stop ruining their fun."
